Education

One of four research projects designed to examine barriers to the entrance of women into nontraditional careers, the study summarized here examined the attitudes held by 638 New Jersey high school students, teachers, and other professionals at comprehensive and vocational-technical high schools toward sexual harassment. Study participants were asked if they considered 10 different behaviors to be sexual harassment. Female respondents were more likely to consider the behaviors to be sexual harassment than were male respondents. Age was related to the perception of sexual harassment for all behaviors except for touching and gestures: respondents aged 16-18 were consistently less likely to perceive behaviors as sexual harassment than were individuals aged 13-15 or over 18. Caucasian respondents were more likely to perceive noises, work assignments, threats to job security, conditional pay, and wor